Wreckage
by Starhey
Summary: Modern AU. Jack misses Elsa desperately. Without her his days are gray and cold and empty, but with time he learns what the only thing that can bring them together is, and this time, forever. / "You are not like this. This isn't you, Jack" "You are wrong."
1. Chapter 1

_**If by any chance you had read this story: Okay, so I originally posted it as a Jackunzel story some months ago, but then Jelsa happened and suddenly I couldn't keep on writing it, especially the ending… But I love this story so much, so I figured I could make it about Jack and Elsa instead. I had to change some things before I actually liked it, but I'm happy with the results. Hope you liked it too. ENJOY.**_

* * *

**So, I've always been more of a one-shot person, but I'm trying to change that because people always ask me to continue my stories and I literally can't. What you are about to read, usually would have been a real long one-shot but I played with it a little in order to separate it in chapters (most likely three) ****I hope it works; it's been really difficult for me to write this.**

**As always, I'd love if you could point out my mistakes with English, it helps me.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own a thing.**

* * *

Two years had gone by already. The most slow, cold and empty days of my life. Time had become just a burden.

I was walking slowly through the city. There was no one around, but so late in night it was unlikely that someone would be. My steps echoed a little, and every now and then my shadow would appear, distorted by the dim lights.

The frozen wind of the winter was blowing strongly against me, and it almost seemed that it was trying to stop me. To be honest, the cold weather did made it a little difficult to keep on walking, but my steps remained firm and my mind determined. The thought of the wind trying to stop me made me smile and my cheeks ached a little with the movement. It would have been logical to say that it happened because the wind had been hitting my face for so long, but at that point, I chose to believe that it was because that was the first smile that had come to me for months, since I stopped smiling even my fake smiles.

Two years…

My mind was thinking about everything and about nothing. I tried to concentrate only in my destination, because I was afraid that if I allowed myself to think about something else I would regret my decision. However, I couldn't help it but to think and remember and long. Images and feelings splashed my memory with all kinds of emotions…

I thought of my mom back at home. She was probably sleeping, oblivious to what I was doing at the moment. Mom had noticed that something was not right with me, but she figured it was normal and that it would go away with time. I also thought about my little sister. She was young, but she could tell better than mom that I was deeply broken. Many times during the past two years, she had come to my room in the middle of the night and woken me up from a nightmare, then crawled into bed with me, taking my hand with her little one, trying to stay awake with me until morning.

Then I thought of my friends, feeling even luckier. They were good friends, and I wished I could have been a better friend to them. After all, they had also been scared by life with the same blade that had pierced my heart.

I needed to admit that I was grateful, and that that made me feel sorry about all this, but still I didn't change my mind and kept on walking, because behind every single one of my good memories, and the incredible people in my life, and the perfect feelings still inside me, there was the terrible shadow of this day two years ago, the day in which I started to fall apart in the most unfixable way. That day I tried my best to reach the hospital in time, I really, really tried. But by the time I got there, she was already gone.

Elsa was dead.

And it took me only a few days to understand that so was I…

* * *

_I hung up the phone, my heart paralyzed. In a matter of seconds, I was already in my car starting the engine._

_It couldn't be happening. I found it impossible to believe what Hiccup had just told me over the phone seconds ago. __While I raced trough the streets of Burgess, I repeated in my head his words until I had them memorized, but that only made them all the most unbelievable._

"_Jack! Merida called… She… she said that Rapunzel and Elsa were in a car accident. I'm on my way to the hospital, but man… it was bad, real bad. Punz is okay, but Elsa… just hurry, man. Hurry up…"_

_I noticed that I was crying, and whipped the tears away with my fist, but they didn't stop. I had the most terrible feeling beating in my heart, and it was drowning me._

_I was driving as fast as it was possible, ignoring all the red lights in the way. It must have taken no more than fifteen minutes to reach the hospital. I recognized Hiccup's car already in the parking lot. Also Rapunzel's and Elsa's parent's. Why was everybody already there? That only made the suffocating feeling inside me bigger, and I ran towards the ER._

_I resisted the urge to scream her name the minute I walked through the door. I frantically looked around, with a few tears of pure despair streaming down my face. I don't remember asking a nurse for directions, but I do remember following them. I do remember running right towards the aisle she had told me. I do remember counting desperately the numbers on the doors until I spotted the one I was looking for. I do remember running even faster, extending my hand in anticipation…_

…_and I will never, ever forget the look on Hiccup's face while he came out from behind the door before I got there._

"_No…" I whispered._

_My best friend closed his eyes, and he instantly seemed ten years older. He didn't say a world, and instead he closed the space between us. His arms surrounded me in a painfully honest hug._

"_No!" this time I screamed._

_I started crying uncontrollably and I let the pain to take over me in screams that I heard as if they were coming from someone else in the distance. I literally felt my heart breaking; I felt every little part of me being torn apart. I felt that I was made of paper. Of burning paper. Of ash. Of nothing…_

_Hiccup didn't let go of me the whole time. I think I even hit him, but he didn't move, and his feet were holding me better than my own. A voice in the back of my mind said that I needed to get out of his embrace and walk through the door, but my body didn't respond. I was frozen._

_At some point, Merida came as well, and she and Hiccup managed to move me from the empty hallway. I didn't know where to, but they sat me down while I kept crying all my hurting pieces out. I felt my friends patting my back, and hugging me, and whispering thing that I nodded to but never listened. I was outside me. I was lost._

_By the time morning came, my tears had already become silent. Elsa's parents came into the room. I automatically walked to them. They hugged me, and I hugged them back, or perhaps it was the other way around, I don't know. I was busy being scared, because by their presence there, I understood that it was my turn to go to her and to say goodbye._

_Hiccup walked with me in silence. When we reached the door, there was no need for me to tell him that I needed to go in there by myself._

"_I'll be right here" he said._

* * *

_She was lying in the bed, and it suddenly was as if it was everything that existed. While I walked slowly towards her, I got scared to see her injured. I doubted I was brave enough to see her all bruised and beaten. I was scared that the last image I'd ever get of the girl I loved so much was the one of a broken body. A relieved sigh escaped from my lips when I reached the bed and I noticed that her body didn't seem destroyed at all. _

_It was as if she was sleeping, and it made that tiny piece of relief go away. I started crying uncontrollably once more. She was perfect, she was young and for all I could see she was just a tired girl sleeping…_

"_Wake up." I begged while I stroked her cheek._

_But with that gentle touch I began to understand that she wouldn't. The coldness of her skin snapped me out of my useless hopes, and I started to notice detail after detail, proof after proof… her coldness, her stillness, her paleness, and in a disturbing kind of way, her peacefulness._

_I fell to my knees, taking hold of her arm. I buried my head in her sheets while I kept on crying, and the grip of my fingers was so tight that it would have hurt her if she had still been able to feel. All the memories I had about her were crashing inside me like a furious ocean, and I hold on to them as if they could prove that what I had before me was a lie._

_But my love for her would never bring her back just like her love for me hadn't stopped her from leaving. All the promises that we had made to be together forever seemed so naïve and childish then._

_I managed to take her face between my hands, staining her closed eyes with my tears that rolled down until they got lost among her silvered hair. I stroked her forehead and tenderly kissed her lips. The kiss made me collapse to the floor, where I started screaming like a demented person in such a way that made Hiccup come through the door._

_After that, I don't remember much, because all that I could think about was the kiss full of her absence. That kiss had been the ultimate proof, the one thing that made me truly understand that the love of my life wasn't in that body anymore and that all that I loved about Elsa was gone forever, leaving behind only that empty sack of the bones in which she had existed._

_The following days passed by in a blur and I cried nonstop. I actually do believe that I ran out of tears because I have not cried ever since, although my pain still lingers. But there is one other thing I still remember. In her service, her sister asked me if I wanted to say some goodbye words to her, and everyone politely left the tiny room when she told them to. She exited last, and gave me a destroyed look with a soulless smile. While she closed the door after her, all I could think about was how Anna's eyes were so much like Elsa's._

_Later that day, Hiccup told me that everyone had gone silent outside the room, because they could hear my screams repeating again and again the same words._

"_Oh, God, please! Make this stop! Make it stop!"_

* * *

As I continued to walk, my hand rose to my lips and I tried to brush away the feeling of that cursed kiss with my fingers. It didn't work, of course, so I dropped my arm and walked even faster.

I was getting closer to my destination. I was positive about my decision. That night I was finally acting, but I had taken the decision long, long before. Everyday I felt the pain of her absence like it was new, and everyday it tore me apart until my pain was the only piece of me that I was sure about. After her death, it was only a matter of days until the pain was able to take over me and I became it. I had slowly transformed into my pain. My tortured soul was the only thing that had remained from the fool who thought that he could be happy with Elsa forever.

I had decided this because time kept passing by; because my nightmares were always about her coffin and the terrible feeling that she didn't belong there, or about the little box that contained her ashes; because she was dying also inside my memories, and every time I could see less of the girl I had fallen in love with and more of the corpse who couldn't kiss me back, and I desperately needed the girl back. Mostly, I had decided this because what terrified me the most was that I could get over the pain and be happy again. It terrified me that I could forget her.

Oh, yes. That night I was brave enough.

* * *

I could already see the lake from where I was, and I walked faster still. I smiled almost sincerely when I noticed it was frozen. I had come the day before and it hadn't been frozen yet, which meant that the ice would be thin. I sat by the edge of the lake as soon as I got there, and took off my shoes and socks. When I did, it was as if a big weight was being lifted from my shoulders.

I knew I had made the right choice the moment I took a step into the frozen waters. I felt the coldness striking my bare skin like a lightning coming from below, but I instantly felt again a weight being lifted, this time from my heart.

I walked deeper into the lake, each step relieving my tortured soul.

A few steps later, I was already able to hear the ice cracking below me. Moved by an unknown impulse, I raised my head towards the sky, closed my eyes and smiled, and this time I was sure that the smile was honest. I took another step without hesitating, and another, and another. The cracking of the ice was getting louder with every movement I made. It was dangerously real and it was music to my ears. The shattering ice was then the only thing separating me from Elsa, and when the loudest crack of them all reached me, I felt something that overwhelmed me after two years of its lack.

Peace.

It was then that the thin ice finally gave in, and I fell into a precious darkness that accepted me like I belonged there.


	2. Chapter 2

**First of all, thank you for all the support. You guys are great.****  
I hope you like the second part of this story as much. As always, I'd be greatful if you could point my mistakes, it helps me with English. **

**Thanks again for all your amazing words of support! Enjoy!**

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"_Hiccup, what's wrong?"_

"_Mer, I've been trying to call Jack for hours and he won't answer. I'm worried!"_

"_Take it easy, I'm sure he's okay."_

"_No! Listen, he's been acting weirder these last weeks. And on this day, two years ago..."_

"_Yeah, I know, I know. __The accident… Wait! You don't mean to tell me…"_

"_Yes!"_

"_Oh, God... Hic, I'll meet you at the lake. Call 911."_

"_Already have. And I'm about to get there."_

* * *

For long moments, all that I could be sure about was the darkness, yes, different shades of darkness swallowing me into oblivion, pulling me further down towards the bottom of the lake.

I don't know how to explain it, but the weight of the darkness eventually crashed me out of my body. Suddenly I was standing once again outside the water, right next to the hole that I had fallen through. I leaned a little, and I was able to see myself sinking deeper into the water, but I wouldn't dare say that that boy was me.

I wasn't him anymore, and it felt okay.

I looked around me, taking it all in. The wind blew, but I couldn't feel its coldness stroking my face. My feet were bare, but I didn't felt the pain of the freezing temperature against them. The ice was no longer cracking with my weight.

By the movement of the top of the trees and the riddles in the water, I noticed that everything was flowing much more slowly than normal. Even the ice, which is supposed to freeze back together almost instantaneously, was still broken. I was the only thing that seemed to move in normal speed. A bird's flight proved my theory right, because it crossed from one side of the valley to another in an impossible slowly way.

The silence was somehow musical. Every sound was distant, but not totally absent. It reminded me of those moments when you are concentrating so much in something that you can barely hear what someone sitting right next to you is saying. And there was also a calming echo that surrounded even the sweet lack of noise.

The colors seemed to be made of light, which made them brighter but paler, and gave everything the looks of an old photograph.

Funny thing, I never felt scared by any of it.

Out of curiosity, I leaned once again over the not yet frozen ice and watched myself sinking deeper, noticing that it also happened in slow motion. I hadn't moved much from the surface, and I figured that in real time, the old me had been in the water for no more than seconds. I kept watching my body growing smaller, hoping that it would reach the bottom already and that the ice would freeze once again. Then I could consider all of this done with, and I would figure out what to do next…

"Jack, what have you done ?" A voice that I had been terrified to forget asked.

I turned around at once, loosing my balance. I felt my jaw falling, and the things I wanted to say and the questions I wanted to ask remained trapped in my throat, unable to reach my voice. After a moment of silence, a word finally managed to escape from my lips.

"Elsa?"

She smiled the brightest of all smiles, and a confused but honest laughter came from my lungs while I closed the space between us. I held her in a desperate hug that she returned, and all the time I was a mess of teary eyes and pieces of laughter. And I couldn't help but notice that even though the touch of the wind and the cold of the ice were still unnoticeable to me, I was able to feel the warmth of the girl's body.

I took her head between both my hands, and her fingers reached to mine. My forehead touched hers, and I closed my eyes, overwhelmed.

"Elsa…" I whispered.

I opened my eyes once again to find that her blue ones were staring at me. Their old glimmer was still there, the one that made her one of those persons who can smile with the eyes and fix everything with just a gaze.

I studied her face, taking in all the details that I used to love about it, like the color of her eyes, or the splash of freckles on her nose, or the way that strands of her hair escaped from her braid. She seemed to have some kind of light to her, but then again, she always had. Her smile hadn't grown old a day, and I felt the urge to kiss her lips.

But I didn't.

By feeling that impulse to kiss her, I was hit from the inside by the memory of the last time that I had felt such a need, when she was nothing but an empty body with a cold pair of lips and a missing soul. That deadly kiss was the realest thing that I ever felt… what if this girl standing in front of me was nothing more than another one of those lies that I told myself when things were the most unbearable?

I took a step back, afraid of her. Her smile faded a little.

"I won't hurt you Jack."

"Who are you?" I asked. Maybe it was a ridiculous thing to ask, but I couldn't help it.

"It's me, Jack. It's really me." She said, coming towards me. I took another step back. "Jack, it's me, Elsa. Don't be afraid."

She kept walking towards me, and I kept walking backwards, trying to fix a mess that was rising in my heart. But soon I was standing just by the hole in the ice, and it took a moment of distraction in which I looked down to see the boy still sinking into the depth for her to reach me.

The girl placed softly one hand over my heart and another one in the back of my neck.

"I'm still me, Jack." she whispered, her head approaching. Her lips were just one instant away from mine. "And you are still you…"

I felt my eyes widening in fear when she kissed me, but after a brief moment they were closed and the fear was gone. My heart became an island where only she and I existed. I felt myself smiling against her lips, and a tear made of joy was rolling down my cheek when we finally pulled apart.

The kiss might have taken just seconds, but I felt a part of me resurrecting, a part of me that had died when she did. Just like that, my troubled soul was fixed and my heart was full with a love that was never dead, after all.

Elsa escaped from my embrace, taking a step forward and kneeling by the cracked ice, staring at the old Jack surrounded by darkness, sinking in slow motion.

"Oh, Jack. What have you done?" she asked again, but it didn't felt like a question.

I kneeled besides her, turning her face towards mine. "I wanted to be with you again."

"But this isn't how it's like supposed to be, Jack…" I noticed the seriousness in her voice, but I couldn't help but to smile at the sound of it saying my name. She noticed, and chuckled while standing up, me following suit.

"Well, it is done now." I stated. She looked hearth broken for a split second, but soon turned around and started walking away. I followed her, until we reached the edge of the lake, and we sat down in the snow. She took my hand in silence and I noticed that she was still the only thing around me which temperature I could sense.

"No, it's not." She said firmly.

"Humm?" I was confused.

"It's not done, Jack. You are not dead yet."

"What?" I asked, more confused yet.

"Have you noticed how time passes slowly? The time that you really have spent under the water hasn't been enough for you to drown or to freeze."

"Oh, I see. Then don't worry, Elsa. We just have to wait a little bit longer…"

"In fact, they sent me here to convince you not to die." She said, looking me right in the eyes.

"What are you talking about?" My voice was angry.

"You can choose, Jack…" she started, but I interrupted.

"Well, I don't see how" my tone was slightly rude. "My body is in the water, and the only one who knows it it's me."

"I think you are underestimating your friends, Jack. They know you better than you think."

And as if on cue, Hiccup came rushing into the valley, right in front of me. Seeing him running was strange, because he moved slowly like everything else in the valley. He stopped and scanned his surroundings.

"Jack!" he screamed, and his voice was like and echo with no end and no beginning.

"Hiccup! Wh… what? What are you doing here?"

My best friend didn't answer, but started running once again in the slowly kind of way. I saw his movement frame by frame, capturing all too well all the details of the pain in his expression.

"He can't hear you, Jack" Elsa said.

Just then, Hiccup reached me, but instead of crashing into me, he just passed right through, like I was nothing. The feeling of it sent shivers to every part of me, and for the first occasion in all that time, I felt cold. I turned around, following with my eyes the strange movement of the boy, still unable to understand what had just happened. I jumped a little, in surprise, when Elsa took my hand.

"But… but he called my name" I said, staring at our intertwined fingers as if that connection could explain the one that hadn't happened with Hiccup.

"Look, Jack…" she said, pointing at Hiccup with her free pale hand. The boy was just reaching the fence surrounding the frozen lake, leaning a little over it. "He meant the real you."

"Jack!" came Hiccup's echo of a voice.

"I am the real me." I said to Elsa.

"Well… one point of view." she answered, and then smiled at Hiccup.

I raised my eyes to see what he was doing, and the image of Hiccup jumping above the fence and heading to the water took me by surprise.

"Hiccup? What are you doing?" I asked him as if he could hear me. I approached hurriedly to the lake, Elsa following me like a warm shadow.

My widened eyes follow Hiccup's slowed movements. His steps were shaky when he first walked into the thin ice, but soon they became quicker and quicker. Maybe he was running, it was hard to tell, but I sure knew that he was at least going as fast as his cautiousness allowed him to. I watched in terror the thin ice cracking below him, but surprisingly, he wasn't scared. His eyes were fixed upon the big hole, in which he knew all to well that a sad boy had just fallen through. I couldn't believe that the ice hadn't broken already, but he reached safely the spot where my body was sinking.

It wasn't until he jumped through the whole that I finally understood what he was doing. The water splashed and swallowed him.

"No! Fool, stop it!" I screamed at his swimming figure.

Elsa took my hand again, and I looked desperately at her.

"Calm down, Jack." she said, sweetly. "Nothing will happen to him, I know so."

I believed her, but still I couldn't help but to look back at Hiccup. I saw him swimming right towards my sinking body.

"How do you know?" I asked Elsa in a whisper.

"I can tell. Besides, he isn't trying to die."

It was difficult to look what was happening down there, among the shadows, but I could distinguish perfectly Hiccup's motion when he extended his hand and take hold of my body's forearm.

Right in that second, I suddenly felt nothing but cold in my skin and heat in my lungs. I felt as if the lack of air was burning me from the inside. The beats of my heart were desperately drumming against my chest and against my temples, and my mind felt all of it with detail.

Elsa surrounded me with one arm, and all those sensations were gone just like that, but I was terrified, with my both hands pressed against the place where I had just felt my heart fighting.

I looked down at the two boys, and noticed that Hiccup was already reaching the surface. I figured that perhaps during those seconds in which I felt slightly alive again, time had gone by normally. Hiccup gasped for air when he emerged from the water, dragging my body along.

"Hiccup, stop! What are you doing, you idiot? Leave me alone!" my words made no effect on him.

"Come with me Jack" Elsa's sweet voice ordered me. "We need to talk."

I let her pull me away from the struggling boy who was risking his life for nothing.

* * *

The light of the moon illuminated Elsa's features while she dragged me into the quiet forest. Her arm was linked with mine, and her contact was easing the storm inside me.

It had been a while since I recognized where she was leading me to, but I still let her guide the way. There was a tree in the forest, not far away from the valley. We used to come there a lot, when she was around. We would just sit there, and tell each other our pasts and our fears and our secrets. One of those times, I carved our names by the very bottom of the tree, so the marks would grow higher as time passed. Back then, it felt as if those marks represented a promise that could actually last forever.

We soon arrived.

The shadow of our tree was transparent, almost absent. It seemed to be sleeping in peace. Elsa stayed behind when I let go of her arm and took a step forward, kneeling to see the marks. I caressed the letters of her name, and just like everything else, I couldn't feel their texture, or their temperature, but I tried to imagine that they had the kind of warmth that Elsa had, like thin sunlight in a winter morning.

But those letters seemed to be angry at me, and I knew why. I hadn't come to visit the tree ever since the owner of the carved name died. I had let the tree grow taller for two years without daring to come and witness it. For me, that tree was exactly like the stone that had behind the little box that kept Elsa's ashes. It was something in which her memory lingered… in which no more than her memory remained.

Even when the tree rejected me, I sat against it when Elsa did. My arm went around her and I almost didn't notice. I smiled recognizing in this an old habit that I had back when I felt able to protect her. What a fool.

But not one of those old regrets mattered then, sitting with her, against the tree that knew so much about us.

"I've missed you so much, Elsa" I confessed playing whit her fingers. She brought my hand up to her lips and kissed it.

"I'm sorry" she said.

I took her chin to force her to look me in the eyes.

"Don't be. It was me who failed you."

"Oh, Jack. You didn't fail me." Her voice was just as warm as her. "You loved me."

It was me who looked away.

"Exactly. I loved… I love you so much, Elsa. And still I couldn't do anything to save you."

When she put a hand in my cheek to make me look at her, she wiped a tear away with her thumb. She was also tearing up.

"Please, don't say that. Don't feel that."

"But it's true. I couldn't even tell you goodbye, or tell you what you meant to me."

"But I knew it Jack. I died being sure that you loved me. And it comforted me."

I have heard her speaking in that kind of way when she was alive. Her whole expression was serious, and the truth of her words was touchable.

"And where have you been, Elsa?" I asked, resting my head against hers.

"Everywhere. I'm always with the ones that remember me. I have seen my parents crying, Jack. I have memorized Anna's silence, and I have touched your pain with my own hands. But I can't feel sorry for any of you. I can't feel sad. I can't miss my life. I'm always at peace. Dying was scary, and lonely, but it was only a moment. After that, I've never been alone." Her voice had become quieter with every word. She finished with a smile. That smile seemed intended to someone who wasn't me.

"So, do you visit me often?" I asked, and she chuckled.

"I never leave your side." Her tone became darker. "You were more broken everyday…"

"But now I'm fine." I said. "Now I'm with you."

"Jack…" she started.

"No." I interrupted. "I won't go back. I haven't felt this alive in a long time, Elsa. Until now, I was as dead as you. Only that I was truly alone."

"Perhaps you chose to be."

The kiss I pressed to her lips in that moment was sad and desperate. Just like me.

When we pulled apart, she rested her head in my chest, and I surrounded her with both my arms, as if I was trying to stop her from being taken away from me.

I was relieved after learning that she hadn't been suffering those two years, and I was more than happy to find out that all that time, she had somehow existed.

Every now and then, she said something to try and convince me to go back to life, to my mom, to my sister, to our friends… but I pressed a kiss to her head, dismissing her intentions. After a while, she stopped talking, and there, in the musical silence of that moment without a time, my forgotten tree forgave me.

And so did I.

* * *

I jumped into standing when I felt a powerful pain hitting me right in the chest. It could only be described as lighting. The cold against my skin was back and more intense than before, and for a brief moment, I could hear loud voices whose owners I couldn't see nor recognize.

"I'm sorry." said Elsa, standing up from the ground after I pushed her. "I should have warned you."

"About what?" I asked. The pain had gone as fast as it had come.

"Don't worry. That was the first one, but I don't think that you will be able to feel the next ones." I still didn't understand what she was talking about.

"Close your eyes, Jack." Elsa ordered me. I did and she took my hand. "Now open them."

To be once again standing by the lake took me by surprise, but not as much as the little crowd that had gathered there. They were all rushing in slow motion.

Hiccup was standing aside from the group, wrapped in a blanket and not taking his eyes off of them. I also recognized the girl with fiery red hair that was hugging him with one arm, and holding a cell phone with her free hand, talking with someone. I didn't know who Merida was talking to, but the mere idea of the possibilities send shivers down my spine.

All the people in the small group were wearing the same clothes with a red cross printed in the chest. An ambulance with more people wearing the same uniform was parked near by, and one guy was getting a stretcher out of it. I knew that the little group was kneeling around my body before coming close and looking at it by myself.

The old Jack laid on his back, over two blankets that someone had extended for him to avoid the contact with the snow. He was impossibly pale; his skin had some kind of white that lingered between blue and gray. His eyes were closed in a scared expression. A woman was holding his chin up, and the white of her gloves made the white of his skin look all the most sickening.

"One more time. Charge, and… clear!" another one of them said, while pressing a defibrillator device against my body's bare chest. I heard detail by detail the terrifying sound of the machine charging, and gasped in anticipation of the pain that I thought would come, but just as Elsa had said, I didn't feel anything. I saw the back of the old Jack curving up in the air, as if something was trying to break his ribs and escape from inside him. I placed a shaky hand above my chest.

"Stop it!" I ordered, but by then I knew all to well that they couldn't hear me.

"They won't be able to bring you back, Jack. Only you can!" Elsal said, letting go of my hand and turning me around from the scene.

"Stop it, Elsa!" I said, raising my voice.

"No, Jack. I won't allow this. You only have to truly wish it and you will live. Please, please, don't do this for me!"

"This isn't only about you…" I replied, and I spoke so lowly that I wasn't sure she had heard me. But it was true, it wasn't only about Elsa, it was also about me, trapped in a life that I couldn't keep on living.

"You need to go back, Jack! Please, go back." I knew by the way in which her voice trembled that I was running out of time, and that if she was to convince me to go back, it was right then or never.

"Back to what?!" I was angry.

She cracked half a smile.

"Maybe the proper question is 'back to whom'." Her eyes stared at something behind my shoulder, and I turned around so quickly that I almost loose my balance.

I saw exactly what I was afraid to see. My mom's car had just stopped as close to the scene around my body as possible, and with a broken "Stay in the car, sweetheart." she slammed the door closed and ran towards the little crowd. I perceived her movements just as I had with Hiccup's when he had run earlier, frame by frame, and it was as if I could see her getting older by the second. Her face was distorted with a pain that I knew well, for I have felt it every day since Elsa was taken away from me. I remembered myself running through the halls of the hospital, to afraid of not getting to her in time.

To be reminded of that made me look away from my mom, but then, as if by accident, my eyes stared into the ones of my little sister, who was disobeying, timidly getting down from the back seat of the car, and it was all worse. She reminded me of my soul, and of all the few good things that were still in it.

Overwhelmed, I turn around to see Elsa.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I asked, and my voice mirrored the mess inside of me.

"I'm no doing it, Jack. It is you, you are doing this. But you can stop." Her intentions were clear.

She thought that by making me witness all of that, I would change my mind. But she had miscalculated. Dying was something that I had decided firmly long ago, and of course I had considered the damage and pain I would cause to those who didn't realize that my life meant nothing. The mere idea of it haunted me every night, but the absence of Elsa haunted me more. I lived two years in which everything had reminded me that my Elsa no longer existed, and the thing that reminded me of it the most, was me.

So yes, it hurt like flames to watch all the hearts that I was breaking, but my mind was made up. Only one frightening question remained…

"Don't you want me to be with you?"

"Of course I do, Jack. Of course I do." she smiled a sad smile. "But not like this."

"And what difference does it make, then? If you want to be with me, who cares about how…"

"I do. And you should." She extended her arm behind her, pointing at the scene. "You are not like this. This isn't you, Jack"

"You are wrong."

"I'm not. I love you, and I know exactly why. I love you because of who you are, and it scares me to see you letting go of that, Jack. You are not this person."

My silence and the look of my eyes was the only answer I could manage.

"If you die Jack, you will no longer be the one who I love so eternally, and so, you will never be able to love me as much as you love me now."

"Why can't you understand?" I asked, genuinely confused. "I can't live with out you, Elsa! I simply can't!"

"Jack, I am always, always with you."

"Shut up!" she jumped a little, startled by the anger that I couldn't keep on holding in. "It's so easy for you! You just say that you are always with me and everything… but what about me? Huh? WHAT ABOUT ME?! I can't be with you, I can't see you, or touch you or tell you I love you…" I paced frantically back and forth while screaming at her. "I mean, how dare you?! You just come here and tell me to live again… well, guess what?! I wasn't living. I haven't lived a day since you left!"

"Jack…" I didn't hear her voice, but I notice the movement of her quivering lips.

"I mean, you have no idea!" I continued "You don't know how it's like to be me and to wake up every single day wishing that I hadn't. And… and to realize that all the good things that you still have mean absolutely nothing… my family, my friends, nothing matters, nothing makes me happy! Everything just died! Everything was dead, just like me! Just… just like you. "

She was fighting back the tears, and to notice it made me realize that so was I.

"You just died, Elsa!" my voice became even louder. "And I couldn't get to say goodbye! Why? Why didn't you wait for me?!" I looked at the sky above me, feeling that the moon was looking back at me with all its unmerciful greatness "WHY?!"

But the moon gave me no answer, so I looked again at the pale blonde girl who was now crying as honestly and as brokenly as I was.

"I… I haven't lived a day…" I repeated with a cracked voice, walking towards her with drunk-like steps "Not a single day." Her arms crashed me, returning the possessive hug I gave to her.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" it was my soul more than my voice that was speaking now. Both our legs seemed to lack the strength to keep us up, and we soon were kneeling against a white snow whose coldness I could finally feel, but we hold on to our hug as if it could save us from what was eating us from inside.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" I wished I could just stop talking. "Why, Elsa? You killed me."

"I know it." came her whispered answer." I lied earlier, Jack, when I said I couldn't feel sad. There's one thing that I can feel miserable about, and it is the fact that I destroyed you. I will have to deal with it through eternity." She tightened her embrace around me. "I'm trying to save you from that. I'm trying to save you from killing what you love the most."

I started to cry even harder, about me, and about Elsa, and about the decision that my heart knew was right in spite of all the feelings that it couldn't get rid off.

Before I buried my head in her shoulder, I got through my blurry vision the image of my little sister, gathering in her tiny hands my shoes that until then had been in the same place I had left them before stepping into the cold, thin ice.

It was only a second, but it disturbed my entire soul and broke me in a new kind of way that made everything look different, and as I continued to cry harder, I used all my might to remind my heart that no matter what, the most important feeling inside of it was still and forever would be my infinite love for Elsa.

That was what mattered, and knowing that, I was ready to face whatever my decision might bring.

* * *

"_Okay, one last time! Charge and… Clear!"_

* * *

**Thanks for reading and wait for the last chapter.**


	3. Chapter 3

**(EDITED, just corrected typos and added details.)**

* * *

**First of all, I want to thank you all for the amazing support and kindness that this story has received. **

**Secondly, I'm so sorry this took so long. It is the final chapter per se (I plan to add a little epilogue after this), and I literally had no clue of what I wanted of this one, but a few days ago I got all weird-sad-inspired or whatever the mood that allows me to write in my style is… and I came up with a new Jelsa fanfic (**_**Forgettable**_**, in case you wanna check it out), and while I typed that, suddenly what I wanted of this chapter became clear. This is probably the longest chapter I've ever written. **

**(A warning for language… just one word, but… paranoia). **

**I really hope you like this. And again, thank you so very much.  
**

* * *

The cold began to rise while she slipped away from my arms. The world around me changed and it scared me.

I kept repeating to myself how much I loved her, because it terrified me that the choice I had just made could be misunderstood as lack of love. But to be honest, I never thought that she would be the one of us who would feel that.

_I love you. I love you so much. _

Soon, everything around me mixed into a confusing blur. I could no longer feel her body in my arms, and my fear had grown as fast as her absence…

Was it too late to change my mind?

Yes. It was.

* * *

_The fallen leaves of autumn formed a cracking surface that I liked walking on. The wind wasn't cold and wasn't warm. The afternoon was silent, peaceful._

_I was early. My friends wouldn't arrive until four o'clock. I felt like walking. The whisper of the wind seemed to take me by the hand, leading me into the park covered by the red layer of dried leaves. _

_While I walked slowly, I looked up, down, right, left… Thinking back to that day, I think that maybe, without knowing, I was already looking, looking for her. _

_She was sitting on a green bench, with an opened book on her lap but the blue eyes staring at the movement of the top of the trees. _

_It was all of her, but I think that it was mostly those eyes that made my stop still. Without even realizing, my feet took me to the bench and I sat down at the opposite end. She went back to her reading, and it took all my might to keep my eyes away from her, but every now and then I just couldn't help it anymore. I spent like that until four o'clock and a few minutes more, and in that time, I had already memorized her features; the color of her pale skin and the way it contrasted her dark blue hoodie that fit her kind of loosely, how she played absent-mindly with her braid, the way she blinked, her scent... I even imagined how her smile was. _

_I got up from the bench having the feeling that that was just the begging. _

* * *

The white of a ceiling and the beep of a machine monitoring my heart greeted me the moment my eyes fluttered open.

"Damn!" I intended to scream, but my voice was just a defeated whisper.

"Jack?" I recognized Hiccup's voice coming from somewhere at my left, but I was forced to ignore him by the rising pain inside.

"Damn, damn, damn, damn!" I covered my eyes with my opened palms, which soon curved into fists that I started hitting my head with.

She had said that I only needed to truly wish it and then I would live… had I? Had I actually truly wished to leave her again, to have her one more time ripped off from my arms? Taken away, just like that? Had I actually truly wished to go back… to this?

All my body hurt many different kinds of pain, and they all were new and they all were like Elsa. Hiccup tried to stop me from hitting myself, holding my wrists while I barely noticed his efforts, and the next thing I knew, he was hugging me and I was crying to his chest with an amount of energy that it wasn't possible I could have. Soon I felt myself quickly drifting back to sleep, still driven crazy about the fact that an instant ago, Elsa's voice was saying that she loved me.

Yes, right then, while waking up to a life that still I didn't wanted, while I heard Hiccup calling my mother's name, while the monitoring machine stabbed with every beep the very heart that it was there to keep alive, I could perfectly remember that what seemed moments ago I had held Elsa between my arms…

…but with time it became easier to forget.

* * *

"_Elsa, Jack. Jack, this is Elsa" Rapunzel introduced._

_What a small world._

_I shook her hand and didn't want to let go. _

"_Hello, Jack." Those were the first words I ever heard her voice saying, but it suited her perfectly, and suddenly my name felt really mine just because she said it. "Nice to see you again."_

_Rapunzel seemed confused, but I just chuckled rubbing the back of my neck, taking the hint. My memory fluttered back to the bench, and the walk, and the wind, and her eyes. _

"_Yeah… nice to see you again." _

_Elsa…_

* * *

When I was able to go home, my friends started visiting me on a daily basis. Sometimes they actually gave it a try and smiled their best smiles, asking me if I wanted to play video games or watch a movie as if nothing had happened. Sometimes they had given up before even crossing my door, and we spent hours sitting in silence, staring at the walls. Somehow, no matter what they did, it was just what I needed that day, whether it was to be treated like I was normal or to be treated like I was broken, and with their help I started to understand that I was both.

At night, my mom wandered the house like a ghost, occasionally opening my door and staring at me while I pretended to be asleep, just to make sure that I was still there and I was still breathing. At day, she would look at me, and smile, and say 'I love you'. And I believed her. I also trusted that she knew I loved her too, even though I never said it back.

My little sister touched me as if I was made of glass. She looked at me all the time and I saw in her eyes that she had changed after seeing things no child should ever see, like her older brother laying practically dead on the cold floor. She no longer came to my room in the middle of the night to wake me up from my nightmares, for I had stopped having them, but when I couldn't sleep and the sun was about to rise I would go to hers, to spend next to her the coldest moments of the night.

That is how my dearest people, step by step, did their best to fix me. But no one ever dared to mention _it_. Or to mention _her. _The only one who tried to make me talk about that night and the frozen lake was the psychiatrist I was sent to, but all she got from me was a fake, silent smile. If she mentioned Elsa, I would laugh because that was the best I could manage, a dead piece of laughter. So, I never talked about my suicide attempt or the forever gone girl who drove me to it.

Except for that day, almost three months after I was sent back home form the hospital. That Friday, my friends didn't come, but Anna did.

"Hello, Jack" she said.

"Anna." I couldn't hide my surprise. I pushed some clothes to the floor to make some space for her to sit next to me on my bed. "Come, have a sit, please."

She opened the curtains and then sat next to me. Our eyes locked for a long minute, and I noticed that they didn't only were like her sister's, but they were also like mine's, unmercifully changed by fate.

"So, how are you doing, Jack?"

"I'm fine. I mean, it's been hard, but I'm better now." I answered, adding a smile.

Anna chuckled.

"You are a good liar, Jack. But I'm used to lie too, just like that, so no one will know. So, how are you doing, Jack?"

"I'm trying…"

"Jack."

"Okay. I want to be trying…"

"Really?"

"No."

"That's more like it." she said with a smile that actually seemed happy. I had to wipe a tear away from my cheek, but it was no use. In a matter of seconds, I was already crying silently hiding my head behind my hands. Anna put an arm around me, and I buried my head into her shoulder, feeling for the first time since Elsa died that it was okay to show my wounds to someone.

"I'm sorry". I said after a while, and she smiled again.

"It's okay." She made a pause, as if she was trying to figure out the proper way to say what she was about to say. "You can trust me, Jack."

"I know…"

"No. Jack, please understand. You can trust me." And I understood what she meant and why she said it before dhe said it herself "Have you thought again about killing yourself?"

"Yes. But I won't."

"Just remember that you can trust me. Do you promise, Jack? I'm not here to cheer you up, or to ask you to be okay, because I think I might have an idea of what you feel since she passed away, but what I do want to ask you is to never forget that I will always want to help you."

I was speechless.

"Jack, I can't lose you." her voice was just a whisper now. "You know, my sister was my favourite person in the world. Ever since I remember I loved her more than anything. And all her life, he was never happier than she was when she was with you."

"Anna…" I felt my eyes watering again.

"I know it's selfish, but I need you. I know you loved her, Jack… and I can't explain it, but it helps me to go on just to know that you exist and that you loved her and you made her happy. And besides, I owe it to her, to keep you safe."

"Anna, I…"

She stood up.

"I know that you want to let go, or sometimes even _need_ to let go. But don't. Please, never, ever let go. Goodbye, Jack."

The following Monday I went back to school.

* * *

_Autumn vanished into winter. Our friends didn't like winter's weather, but Elsa and I loved it, and while they stayed indoors we went outside and just walked around aimlessly._

_It was during that winter that we became really close. I discovered that Elsa was a person made of closed doors, but day by day, little by little, she started to let me in. On our walks, I would talk and talk and talk and it was so easy that soon I started talking about the important things. And again, day by day, little by little, she started talking too, sharing with me little pieces of who she was for me to put together. _

_The snowy days came and we were rarely apart. Our friends smiled at us, noticing that there was an undeniable bond holding us close. And it felt okay. If I was not physically next to her, my mind would be. We talked until really late at night and woke up still not having enough. _

_For Christmas she went out of town with her family and I missed her like crazy, crazier still because I noticed that __the thought of she not missing me too__ somewhat scared me. I walked around Burgess trying to enjoy the winter and to put my nervousness aside, but even the winter remembered me of Elsa, with its coldness that was amazingly beautiful. _

"_Who would have thought? Jack himself, finally falling and falling hard" Hiccup teased. _

_When she got back home, I lost no time and I went to her house._

"_Are you up for another wintery walk?" _

"_Jack." she laughed. _

_But we did went on a walk that night. And the following day. And the next after that one. And the next. _

_By the time the snow and the winter melted away I had already, day by day, little by little, fallen completely in love with her. _

* * *

The day three years had gone by since Elsa's death nobody left me alone.

I know my mother talked to my friends to make sure they would take me out so I wouldn't be just sitting around in the house, but there was no need of such precautions. I was okay. Really.

I'm not saying it was easy, but it was easier. I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I tried to fall asleep, but I couldn't. I also tried to feel sad, but that didn't work either. My breathing became uneasy.

_Calm down. Calm down. _

That happened to me a lot around those days. I hated it. Time was actually healing me, but I wasn't ready for the pain to stop, for the peace to return. For three years I knew nothing but my storm and her absence and if there was more to life than that, I wasn't ready for it yet.

_Come on. Hurt. _

But it didn't. It had already started. My worst fear… I was finally able to think about her without pain. The previous year I had done what I had done because I was scared of exactly that, that feeling beginning right there while I stared at the ceiling summoning Elsa's image without any burden.

I realized that that was it. It was my chance to choose the step that would define the rest of my life until I saw Elsa again. Right then was the moment to choose the darkness or the light. I could decide if I would learn how to let her go or to keep her as a shadow forever. What would it be, then? Light or darkness? For the rest of my life, for every day I might have left? Light or darkness?

I got up and opened up my laptop. Without even blinking, I clicked on a folder that I hadn't opened for the past three years, and from among the bunch of photos of me and Elsa that extended across the screen I selected the one I liked the most, of me and her the first time we went by the lake. I printed it.

Just when I had finished pinning it to the wall, Hiccup honked outside my window waiting for me at his car. Before rushing out, I looked again at the photo and touched Elsa's face with the tip of my fingers and smiled.

_So light it is. _

* * *

"_Elsa, Elsa, Elsa, Elsa, Elsa!" I started again.  
_

_She chuckled._

"_Yes, Jack?"_

"_I love you."  
_

"_I love you too."_

_It was the first snow day of the year, and I was walking around with Elsa. That day I was really happy because it was already winter again and I couldn't help but to look back to the previous year when everything had started and to know for sure that it had been the best year of my life. _

"_Elsa, Elsa, Elsa, Elsa…!"_

"_Stop it, Jack." she laughed. _

"_Nope. Hey, Elsa…"_

"_Yes?"_

"_I love you." She just stopped walking and kissed me. _

_The touch of her lips always reminded me of the time I kissed her for the first time, sitting on the bench where I first saw her. It had been on one of the first days of spring, and she was staring at the top of the trees, just like some months before, but instead of an opened book it was our holding hands what she had resting on her lap. She had closed her eyes, and not resisting the urge I turned her head towards mine and kissed her. After a brief seconds, I felt her smiling against my lips. _

_A cold chill blew, and we pulled apart and I stopped remembering. She started walking again and I followed suit. _

"_Hey, Jack."_

"_Yes?"_

"_I love you."_

* * *

My eyes widened open in the middle of the night and I sat down on my bed touching my pounding heart. The darkness around me felt thick and the air of my room even more so.

I felt the familiar knot tying itself in the middle of my throat. It asphyxiated me. The knot was cold and heavy. My hands flew towards my neck and just stayed there. I closed my eyes tightly and tried to relax. I hadn't cried for almost two years, but I still couldn't get rid of the knot that came when the tears didn't.

Not long before that night, I had started having dreams that I couldn't remember and I wouldn't precisely say they were nightmares. It was more like a feeling.

It felt like I was holding something that I loved between my arms and it was suddenly taken away from me. I could actually feel it evaporating, turning into fog and escaping from my embrace. It worried me how real this felt… and how much it reminded me of something from my past.

But then again, many things had been taken from me during the pass of my days… I should be used to it. The true is that nothing ever stays, nothing lingers.

I laid down again, my eyes feeling heavy and the terrible feeling slowly erasing itself from my arms. With heavy eyes, almost asleep, I looked to the wall where I had pinned the photo of me and Elsa to the wall, and two more photos of us, one for each year that had gone by since I pinned the first one.

Nothing ever stays.

* * *

"_This is beautiful, Jack"_

"_I know you'd like it here." _

_Once, my mom had brought me and my sister to this lake. I hadn't returned there, but it looked just the same. The winter was gone and the spring was blooming in the form of tiny flowers that colored the valley here and there. I stayed behind while Elsa approached to the edge of the lake, watching how the tall grass almost reached beyond her knees and some butterflies skipped about. _

_It all seemed like a dream. _

_When she was at the edge I ran towards her and the two of us fell into the lake. _

"_JACK!" she screamed at me wanting to sound angry, but her own laughter betrayed her. _

"_What's up, Elsa? Don't you know how to have a little fun?"_

"_That's what you think, uh?" and suddenly, she started splashing me with water, laughing and screaming at me. _

_I captured the moment as if I was watching it in slow motion. Her bright smile, strands of her hair escaping from her soaked braid, her eyes as blue as the waters and her presence as warm as the spring around us… she didn't act that way often, but that was who she actually was. Elsa was always so careful and guarded, prisoner between her self inflicted walls… but she had let me in, and I had sworn someday I'd get her out. _

_The sun was high in the sky, and we were sitting between the flowers in the middle of the valley, letting the warmth to dry us up. _

"_Smile, Elsa!" I said, raising my phone's camera in front of us. _

"_Stop it, Jack!" she said, hiding her face behind her hands. _

"_Come on, kiddo. Just smile." _

_She dropped her hands and I took the photo before she could hide again. _

"_Let me see it." Elsa asked. _

"_Nope." I said blocking my phone and shoving it inside the chest pocket of my shirt. _

"_Jack! Let me see" she ordered. _

"_No way!" I said standing up. "If you want this phone you'll have to take it from my dead cold fingers!" _

_I started running away from the valley, inside the forest. Below those trees it was a little bit darker and the only sound was the one made by the birds until Elsa's laughter running after me came along. _

_I stopped suddenly when I came to a tree that was taller and thickest than the rest, and it seemed that the other trees respected it because not one grew nearby, which allowed more light to slip between the tops and to illuminate the grass. It was beautiful. _

_Elsa arrived and hugged my neck. _

"_Look at this" I whispered because I thought that no voice would fit there. _

"_Wow." was all she could said. She walked ahead until she could touch the big tree. I walked to her and put my hand over hers. Our fingers intertwined. _

_We lost track of time talking under that tree. The moon's light was white and the night's air warm._

_Before we went away, I looked back to the tree and I knew that we would return there many times in the future. That place had made us feel safe. There we could last forever. _

* * *

After two months of living in the new city I had finally unpacked the last box. It contained old coffee mugs, and I put them in their proper place in the kitchen of the new apartment that still looked so empty that I couldn't think of it as my home.

That was supposed to be a new beginning, a fresh start with no burdens from my messy past. Nothing was supposed to follow me there from Burgess, no car wreck, no funeral, no frozen lake, no hospital, nothing…

But it had turned out that I couldn't leave everything behind.

I walked to my room and I opened the closet. I kneeled down and I found the old shoe box that I had thrown there the moment I first walked into this new life, the one that contained all my photos of Elsa. I had printed them after I signed the contract for this apartment, then I had put them in the shoe box and hadn't opened it again until then. I opened the last one of the drawers and from below everything else I got the leather photo album that my mom gave so I could fill it with pictures of my days at this city.

I got scissors, glue, and I sat down on the floor, next to my bed. I placed all the pictures in front of me so I could see them all. I opened the album and ripped off the first page where my mom had written a few words that I never read, and got to work. When I closed the album again it was full of her, of us, and our happy past together that now seemed make believed.

I went to the kitchen and got the box of the coffee mugs. Back in my room, I put a pillow inside the box, and then I put the photo album. Above it all, I placed the old blue hoodie that I used to wear all the time when I was younger and she was around, the one that used to be hers. I closed the box and carefully put it below my bed knowing that if everything went right in this new city, I would never need to open it again.

I came closer to the window and looked at the lights of the city. It was so different from Burgess, where you could see the stars every night. It was early but I decided to go to bed, because the next day I had a date with a girl from work. She was nice, pretty, and funny, and perhaps I was ready.

I was ready.

I covered my head with the blankets. In this city the winter was colder and I didn't like it. Shivering a little I fell asleep above the closed box that contained everything that still remained from Elsa.

And from me.

* * *

_It was one of the last days of summer. The last months had been really dry and hot, but under the shadow of our tree the breeze blew fresh._

_Elsa was telling me a story from way back into her past, when her little sister got really sick and almost died. Luckily she made it alive, but all of it seemed like a shadow that still was hanging over her. _

"_Since then, I've been scared of losing the people I love the most… That's why I don't like getting close to people."_

_"Then what about me?" I teased. _

_She laughed. _

_"You? I don't know... You came out of nowhere."_

_"I'm irresistible." I joked. _

_"Yeah. I was helpless." She answered between smiles. _

_"But seriously," I changed the tone of my voice "I'm so grateful, Elsa, that you managed to love me anyway."_

_"What can I say? You are irresistible." She mocked, before changing her tone of voice just like I just had. "Some times, I even fear that I could lose you."_

"_Me? No way. I will always be by your side." I said _

"_That's really nice, Jack." she smiled, touched. "But who knows what will happen? Fate's a mystery, you know."_

_By all answer I got up, getting my knife out of the outer bag of my backpack. I carved her name and then mine by the very bottom of our tree. She was standing behind me, following silently the movements of my hand. _

"_See?" I said standing up when I was done. "Now it is a promise." _

* * *

Ever since she moved in with me I started getting nightmares again, like the ones I didn't had since I was a teenager.

I got up from bed, trying not to wake her up. I wandered around the apartment that even with her living in it still didn't feel like home.

But isn't that what love does? Make you feel at home?

The floor was cold against my bare feet. Thinking about it, the apartment was always cold. It had been cold at summer, and it was cold then at winter, and it had been that way for the past years.

I stopped in front of the window and I just stared outside, wishing I was out there…

Isn't this love supposed to make me feel at home?

I tried to remember what I used to think of love back when I was young and it seemed like the most indestructible force before life proved me wrong. Now I had a much more realistic expectation of love.

Love wasn't supposed to be magic. It was supposed to make the loneliness seem like gone. It was supposed to give me someone to fix and someone who fixed me back. It was about finding someone who could understand my past and not care about it. Yes, love wasn't supposed to be a miracle, or a light, or a dream, or an adventure. It was just this…

Just this… and while I wondered from where had I gotten a different idea, a snowflake dropped weightlessly to the ground outside my window. And another, and another. The first snow of the winter.

"Jack, honey, come back to bed." her voice echoed through the hall.

I smiled to the snowy night and turned around.

"I'm coming."

* * *

"_You are beautiful." Elsa said to my sister after she finished fixing her hair into a braid just like her own._

"_Am I pretty, Jack?" she asked me. _

"_Of curse you are." I said picking her up and spinning her around the living room. _

_I put her down and she dizzily went to sit down next to Elsa on the floor. There they were, the two girls I loved the most. _

_Suddenly, Elsa took a package from her bag and put it in my sister's hand. She whispered something to her ear and my sister nodded and got up._

_She gave it to me and told me to open it. It was a blue hoodie that felt soft to the touch, one I knew all to well for Elsa wore it all the time. She actually was wearing it the day I saw her for the first time. _

"_Elsa says that she wishes you a happy winter and that she is glad she ever met you."_

"_Could you give Elsa this?" I said to my sister while hugging her. _

"_Of course!" she answered, and then she ran to Elsa who was already waiting for her with arms wide open. _

_I realized I could stay like that forever. _

"_I love you" she mouthed over my sisters shoulder. _

_Yes, forever. _

* * *

My wedding was the next day.

The next day.

My wedding was the next day.

I still didn't believe it.

I remember little of that night, my mind was uneasy and so are my memories. But it was already late at night and I hadn't slept one bit. In a few hours the sun would rise and then it would be a fact. I would be locking all my old doors. Forever.

I got out of bed and I didn't care if I woke her up or not. An urge had risen in my heart like a furious wave and I couldn't ignore it. I turned on the light of the studio and frantically looked for a pen and some paper. I sat down at my desk and just wrote without even knowing what words came out at the other end of my pen.

I needed to explore and to capture all that could be left behind my doors before I closed them for good. The paper was enough of a witness of all the things that I needed to say before I lost my chance. I allowed the wounds that all those years I had been learning how to ignore to hurt me once again, and to be open, and to bleed.

_Elsa. _

For that night, I could remember her face again, I could feel her touch again. For that night, she was more than the forgotten memory that I had transformed her into. For as long as my pen was in touch with the paper I remembered that she wasn't gone, not really, not for as long as I was alive and her name meant something to me.

And it did meant something. It meant so much and it always would.

I folded the papers carefully and put them inside an envelope. I wrote on it "Yours, Forever."

After I placed the letter on top of the leather photo album inside the box I thought I'd never open again I went back to sleep begging to myself not to ever forget the meaning of her name, because, most of all, for me it meant the only thing that make me hold on to a past that I didn't wanted anymore.

* * *

"_Will you really love my forever, Jack?" she asked while she caressed the letter of our carved names._

"_I promise."_

"_Good." she smiled. _

"_Aren't you going to say you promise to love me forever?" I said, chuckling. _

"_No. But I promise I'll always want you to be happy."_

"_Then love me forever."_

"_Forever?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Okay. Forever."_

* * *

"Look, daddy! Look!"

"That's my girl!"

My little princess hopped towards me and I lifted her up into the air. She laughed and the sound was the best music I had heard.

"Look out, dad!" said little Jack, throwing a baseball at me.

"Woah, there. Easy, kiddo."

The grass of our garden was covered by white snow, and the children played restlessly with the toys they had found earlier under the Christmas tree. I went to sit on the stairs of the porch, looking at them playing so unharmed, so free…

…and for the first time in twenty-three years, I felt happy in winter.

* * *

"_I don't know, Hiccup. I really think this could be for good."_

"_What can I say, man? I don't know how you manage to get even happier every day. And that's Elsa's fault, that's for sure."_

"_It is." I smiled. _

"_And Punz says that Elsa has changed for the better ever since she met you." _

"_Really?"_

"_Yup. She says she's also happier. Happier than ever before."_

"_See? I tell you, I really think this could be for good."_

"_So what, are you going to marry her and have kids and all?" he joked. _

"_Of course not. Or at least not now… but don't you see it happening someday, man? Be honest with me, Hiccup. You know me better than anyone. Can you picture me without her?"_

_He actually took his time to think about it. _

"_No, Jack." he laughed. "I can't picture you without Elsa."_

* * *

I signed the papers and just like that it was done. I was divorced.

I returned to the old apartment from my youth. I never sold it or anything, and that was a great convenience at the time being. The basic furniture was there since the week before, and the only thing I brought with me was the old box that contained a past that I could barely think of as mine. That was why all the memories inside it were so precious.

I walked into my old room to find only a naked bed. That was all that I had, that and my stupid box. The place never seemed lonelier. I threw the box angrily across the room, its content falling apart everywhere.

"You promised you would always want me to be happy!" I screamed at the tops of my lungs.

I went to the photo album and kicked it to the wall. It flew and landed open, an old photo of Elsa and my little sister together flying out. I took the photo in my hands and tore it in half, and then tore a whole page of the album and turned all the photos to pieces.

"Does this seems like happiness to you?"

When I was tearing up the fifth or sixth page I started crying over what I've done.

"It's not your fault…" I whispered to all the pieces of her face. I tried to put them together, but it was no use.

I cried myself to sleep and woke up among the pieces of a love that in spite of all my will just wouldn't stay in the past.

* * *

_January was cold that year, but Elsa and I managed to convince our friends to come with us to downtown, just to hang out and be young and careless for a while. It was one of the funniest days of that winter. The sun had came up since morning and kept the air almost warm._

_We sat in a café for hours. I remembered that that day we all talked about the future, and about our big plans. Life was like an open field before us, and we were a few steps away from getting into it and claim it ours to explore and conquer. _

_I still remember the naïve sense of possibility that we all shared. The world seemed to be in our hands, waiting for us to transform it into whatever we wanted it to be. I sat next to Elsa all the time, our fingers intertwined. I'd occasionally would take her hand to my lips and kiss it, as a way to tell her that I wanted her in my future. I was thrilled about the open field, about our world, and about the girl next to me who would be there with me when we took our first step into the unknown abysm of fate. _

_When the night fell, Hiccup offered me and Merida a ride home, and Rapunzel offered Elsa the same. _

_I remember how Hiccup had already started the engine when I stopped him._

"_Wait, Hiccup! Just, a sec. I forgot something." _

_I ran towards Rapunzel's car waving my arms. She sawed me and pulled over. _

_I knocked the copilot's window and Elsa put down the glass smiling at me. _

"_Jack, wh…?" I interrupted her with a kiss. _

"_I had forgotten that." she laughed, and I took her head between my hands. "I love you, okay?"_

"_I know so." she laughed again. "I love you too, Jack."_

_I saw the car growing smaller in the distance and then walked back to Hiccup's car, larger than life. _

_I had all I wanted; the future, the energy, the possibilities, and most of all, the love of my life loved me too. _

_Knowing that, nothing could ever go wrong._

* * *

How much time could I possibly have left? I couldn't take the agony anymore.

Those days, forced into bed, I thought about Elsa more than ever and I wonderer how did I ever managed to stop thinking about her. I wondered if Elsa had suffered the way I was suffering before dying.

Did she felt alone? Did she get time to remember that the last words I said to her were 'I love you'? Did she get time to think of me?

Perhaps to die like she had died, out of the sudden, was better than this. Better than having time to regret everything you ever did wrong, better than getting to wish I had being happier… On the other hand, this way I got the time to say goodbye.

My daughter and my boy were next to my bed all the time and even my ex-wife came to visit once or twice.

My sister had come earlier that week, but couldn't stay because she had her own baby girl to take care of. She looked at me from the door before even daring to come inside, and when she did she just took my hand. Was it possible that I still saw in her the little girl that used to have that same gesture towards me when I was more broken than ever? She was a full grown woman now, but for me she was just like she was back then. Did I ever say to her that I was grateful? Did I ever tell her that the grip of her tiny hand helped me get through the night?

"Thank you." I said just in case. "For everything."

She kissed my forehead and swore that it was okay, that I had nothing to be thankful for…

While she walked out the door I wished she also could remember me as the old Jack, the one who I was long before Elsa died, the Jack who took care of her before she had to take care of me…

* * *

Hiccup had come the day before. He walked right to my bed and hugged me while I cried into his chest just like I had that day when I woke up at the hospital…

Hiccup had always, always been there for me. Looking back at the storm my life had beem, I can't not remember him there, standing next to me like the storm was also his. I wished I had been a better friend to him, and I said 'thank you' over and over again as if that could make it up for a lifetime of unconditional friendship.

We stayed like that for hours, and when he got up and said "See you next Friday, man.", we both knew that he was lying.

* * *

That morning, my son and I were alone for her sister was taking a shower.

"Listen, son." I said with the little energy still in my voice. "There's something I want you to do when I'm gone."

"Whatever you want, dad."

"Good. There is a box below my bed. When I pass I want you to burn it… but first, take out the letter that's inside. I need you to take it somewhere and leave it there. The address is written on a pink paper in the left drawer of my desk."

"Okay, dad. It'll be done."

"Was I a good father, son?" I asked with tears streaming down my cheeks.

"Dad…" my son said. "You have flaws like every human, but no one has ever love my or my sister more than you, and that has always being enough and will be enough even after you leave."

"Really? You won't forget me, kiddo?"

"Never, dad. Never. Never."

* * *

_Hiccup dropped me at home and I walked directly to the couch. I fell asleep without noticing it, smelling Elsa's scent from the hoodie, although I wore it so much that it was almost gone. When the ring of my phone woke me up the night had already fallen._

_I looked at the screen before answering…_

"_Hiccup, hey, what's up? Miss me already?"_

"_Jack! Merida called… She… she said that Rapunzel and Elsa were in a car accident. I'm on my way to the hospital, but man… it was bad, real bad. Punz is okay, but Elsa…just hurry, man. Hurry up…"_

* * *

I knew my moment was close when everything around me vanished and everything seemed to be made of light.

Elsa was there. Not her memory, but her. The real her. I could sense it was her. She opened her hand before me for me to take, and when I did, I noticed that my hand was the one of my old self, the seventeen years old Jack. I touched my body and I understood that all of me had changed back.

"I remember now, Elsa." I said, suddenly aware of everything; the memory of our love fresh like it was new, like it was never gone. And also the last time I was with her, when she saved me once more and made me go back to life.

"Do you regret it, Jack?"

"No."

"Can't you remember all the pain that you suffered ever since I last saw you?"

"I can. But it was worth it."

"Jack…" she smiled. "You are ready. Welcome, Jack. Welcome to forever."

A great an invisible sea of peace washed me and cleaned every single one of my wounds. My past finally stopped being a burden, and my life suddenly made sense. Elsa smiled at me, and I realized I would go through a thousand lifetimes like the one I just left behind just to be with her like this again and to see that smile ever day.

Elsa took my hand again, and we vanished into that moment of pure happiness, finally able to stay like that for the rest of eternity.

* * *

"_Do you want to see something, Elsa? Look this way."_

_Together we watched my son, who was fulfilling his old man's dying wish. He spotted our tree and he pinned the closed envelope of my letter right below our carved names that more than fifty years later were higher. _

_And so, in that place that for us had meant 'always', our names and my letter would read through time:_

_Elsa and Jack._

_Yours, forever._


	4. Chapter 4

**So here we are. Again, thank you so very much for putting up with me all this time. This is how 'Wreckage' ends. I hope you continue to read my other stories, some of you already have, and I'm so thankful for it. **

**What you are about to read, well... it doesn't even has the intention to be beautiful, so maybe it's not. It's more personal, kind of my own rant about death and loss. Anyway, I hope you like it. **

**And again, thank you so very much.**

* * *

A lonely tree grows slowly in the middle of the forest around Burgess lake. It's magnificent, tall and strong, and it hasn't always been this lonely. This tree used to mean a lot to Jack and Elsa, now death and forgotten.

Nothing remains of them except their carved names, and a closed letter that has become just a tiny piece of wet and yellow paper. This is it. All their friends are also gone, and Jack's family never got to know him when he was actually just Jack.

But if this tree had a memory, he would know. He would know exactly who they were.

...and he would know how much they loved each other.

* * *

_Hey, Elsa. I don't know exactly why I'm writing this letter for, but it kind of feels like you will be able to read it, so here it goes._

_I'm getting married tomorrow, Elsa. She is really nice, and I know you would have like her. But the thing is, here I am, hours before my wedding and the only thing I can think about is writting this to you._

_I just... I can't... Or worse... I can._

_I can, Elsa..._

_I can do this, I can do this, I can live without you. Or something like that. You are not gone. I'm not without you, you are always around me. I can't help but to find you, it's just that you have changed. But maybe it was me who changed you into this memory that I want to get rid off, but at the same time I need to hold on to._

_Lately I'm not scared of being remided of you. In fact I like it, but no one ever brings you up because they think that it damages me. If only they knew... Elsa, what kind of a man I am? What kind of a coward? How is it that I'm afraid to look to our best friends in the eyes and tell them what I need? Just tell them "Please, please, tell me how Elsa was, because it's being quite a while since I started to forget..."_

_But although I can't remember you very well, I think about you first thing in the morning and last thing in the night. Sometimes I can't sleep thinking about you. And this pain inside is just as big as it has always been, but I've finally learned how to live with it. I've gotten used to this empty space inside me, I've learned how to be happy even with this hole piercing my soul. I can keep my sadness in one special corner of my mind, and it is always there screaming at me, but it doesn't spread anymore. And I have it there, always there, just there, and I like it to be there, so I can know where to find my sadness just in case one day I need to use it. Like tonight._

_It works the same as your box. You know, I have kept you inside this box below my bed for years, so the memory of you is there and nowhere else. And I always think about you and think you are all around me but then I remember that it isn't possible, that you are inside my box and there is no way you could have gotten out without me opening it, so I say to myself "don't open it". And I never do. It contains all my photos of you, of us, and I won't dare to look at them because I have changed and you are always like that, always, always young and smiling as if you were not even a person. And I do have changed, I've grown old, and my spirit is dry. I know if I looked at those pictures I would wonder who that boy is, and why is he so happy if life isn't such a happy thing. And I would like to warn him, to let him know that he is a fool and that love doesn't matter if fate decides to step in. It also contains your hoodie, remember it? You used to wear it a lot before you gave it to me, and after you were gone I wore it all the time, all the time, trying to imagine that it still smelled like you. I even had it on the day I tried to kill myself..._

_You probbably knew that already, didn't you? Elsa, I tried to kill myself. I'm so sorry, I know now that I would have failed you, that this life is what you must have wanted for me, a chance to be happy. Luckily (luckily?) they managed to save me. Elsa, do you want to know something funny? I think I dreamt of you while I was out, and I can't remember what my dream was about, but I've always felt that it helped me. Elsa, would you be mad at me if I told you that... that to this day opening my eyes and realizing that I was still alive is the worse moment of my live? Worse than when you died, can you believe it?_

_Elsa, I usually try to convince myself that I hate you. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes... But I know I don't hate you, deep inside. It's not your fault that you had to die. It's not your fault that I loved you. Perhaphs it's no one's fault, but I can't help but to look for someone to blame. Most of the times it's me. I don't hate you, Elsa. But I do hate myself, because..._

_Because I want to know, Elsa, am I entitled to happiness? Do I have the right to keep living, to wish for something better, to long for a happy life without your shadow in it? Am I allowed to find love again, am I allowed to _want_ to find love again, a love so big that it will heal me form yours? I know how to pretend to be happy and to love and to be made of something solid, and I wish that someday all this pretending will actually turn into true. But I'm stuck in the middle of wanting happiness and feeling guilty for wanting it, in the middle of wanting to forget and wanting to remember, in the middle of needing, yes, needing to remember, but being forced by time to forget... Am I entitled to happiness?_

_I'm trying my best._

_I had to run away, I couldn't stand it at Burgess. I'm trying my best to live a normal life. I owe it to you, and to all of those who love me in spite of everthing I have become... And I couldn't stand it there, where I looked at every corner and my heart said "here she used to exist, here she used to be someone, to laugh... she breathed this air, she walked this streets... here she used to answer to a name, here she could have done so much, so much more... here you both were happy."_

_And I can't remember you... but I can remember this... this feeling, this warm feeling inside me that forced a smile into my lips. I can remember how you made me mean something, how you completed me. I can remember how it felt to love so blindly and so uncarefully... I can remember all that you made me feel because I can't feel it anymore and I miss it. And it kind of feels as if this was remembering you._

_Perhaphs it is, don't you think, Elsa? Perhaphs the memories of my feelings for you are the only thing that's actually worth remembering, because you had your flaws and I had mine, but our love was so flawless, so pure._

_Elsa, Elsa, Elsa, Elsa, Elsa... I wish you could answer. I wish you could wake up for at least two minutes, for me to tell you that I love you, and for you to order me to be happy because I know I would obey._

_It's just... it's so unfair. Did I ever got to tell you that I had actually pictured a life next to you? I didn't have any plans, but one: you. You were the only thing I was sure I wanted in my future, and I have everything else but it doesn't make any sense. What did we ever did wrong? Why did this happened to us? To you?_

_Elsa, you were the most amazing person I've ever met. No doubt. You didn't deserve to die so young, you just didn't. We were just getting started... And it was so little the time I got to spend with you, just a blink. And it has never made any sense that you are gone, and I miss you so so much. You can't be gone... but you are, nothing about you stopped death from taking you in such a horrible way. And I miss everything that you were and everthing that you made me be, and you and me, you and me, you and me, both of us are so gone, so gone forever. And I'll spend forever wondering what could have been of us, may be we could have been happy. Oh, we could have been so happy... And it was so little... it was not long enough and it was not strong enough, but it was just enough to last through time and to sill be a part of me..._

_Time has had a funny way of healing me. It has turned you into a scar that sometimes is open. But I won't stop loving you, I just won't, I won't... is this even love? Is it, this thing that I have for you? This is not how I remember love. Whatever it is, it has made me to keep on wishing for all this years that this is all a dream, just a nightmare that I will be able to wake up from. I need you to wake me up._

_I still can't believe you are gone._

_I guess I'm writting this to say goodbye, Elsa. I need to give a try, to put more effort... So goodbye, goodbye to you, and to the old, fool Jack. This time I will try to transform you into something that's not as heavy, something that I can carry around with me without it stopping me from moving forward. You and I both deserve it, you deserve to be so much more than a burden, and I deserve to live without one._

_Yes, I'm writting this to say goodbye, because I never got to say it. I'll put you inside my box, and inside the corner of my mind where you belong, and I'll try really hard for both of them to remain closed. I'm setting us free. Goodbye, Elsa, untill we shall meet again._

_I know that I'm nothing but the wreckage of who you loved, Elsa, but I will always, always love you. I promise I will always love you so much that, wherever you may be now, you will feel like you are still here with me._

**_Jack._**


End file.
